


burning in hell, right next to you

by Tobiko



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Fluff and Angst, Friendship/Love, Multi, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Soulmates, just nerds being nerds
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-05-03 07:50:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 15
Words: 19,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14564397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tobiko/pseuds/Tobiko
Summary: Julia and Quentin, or Jules and Q, or Jane and Martin. Whatever they call each other, they are together. Always.Until they aren't.The story of Julia and Quentin, end to end, and all the times they find each other again and love each other forever.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome. Buckle up, it's gonna be a long ass ride.

Quentin Coldwater is born after hours of painful labor a slightly below average weight 6 pounds 8 ounces, squalling as if the world has offended him in some fundamental way. His father is clutching a baby blue blanket and nervous to hold his boy for the first time and his mother passes out shortly after she finishes pushing. Quentin does not stop crying for the next two months.

Julia Ogden Wicker is born a perfect 7 pounds 5 ounces, already growing hair, and let’s out one sharp cry before going silent with wonder at the world. Her father pours a brandy in celebration. Her mother is ready to leave before the nurses have cleared her to go. Her sister Mackenzie is not there, waiting at home with a nanny who will care for Mackenzie and Julia until Julia is three. Julia is deemed a perfect baby by everyone who lays eyes on her, and perfection will be the theme of her life for years to come.

Quentin is raised in a house of tense silence and an awkward air of pretending everything is alright. He spends his time reading or watching the history channel because he likes the stories about aliens in the White House. He is incredibly smart but no one realizes for the first three years of his life because he does not speak in complete sentences and he ignores people when he feels flustered. His dad does not know how to related to him.

Julia is raised in a house of lessons, high society culture, and not much else. She is potty trained before two. She learns to punish herself when not 100% perfect by taking away time with her toys and not allowing herself television. She will not be the reason mommy yells or daddy drinks.

Julia’s parents try to get her enrolled in school at four but are simply unable to do so. Even with Julia’s brilliant mind, the school district insists that they don’t let children skip grades until they are older due to a need for social interaction with peers their own ages. Julia sits through hours of meetings and her parents grousing, and is secretly relieved she will get to go to school with children her own age. Her first day she is a ball of excitement and she has to talk to everyone, know everything. She immediately likes Quentin Coldwater, even though he spends his time with his head ducked and his hair in his face in the book corner. She likes talking to him about books a lot.

Quentin’s parents worry he will not do well in school. As it turns out they needn’t have worried about academics. His kindergarten teacher is extremely complimentary about his work. No, she worries about his social skills. “He only talks to little Julia Wicker, and even that is rare. I’ve seen her chatting away with him and he mostly just nods or says one word. It must be like pulling teeth for the poor girl.”

If anyone had bothered to ask, Julia would have said in her most prim voice, “I would thank you not to speak about my friend that way.” 

.

Julia and Quentin are placed in the accelerated program at the start of their second grade year.

They’ve attended school together for two years, but Quentin has been too shy to strike up friendships. Julia, by contrast, has flourished, making friends with everyone she’s met and becoming the most popular girl in the class. Julia is good at everything, smart and funny and kind. Everyone wants to be around her. Even Quentin is drawn in to the allure of Julia.

After they’ve both been placed in the same program, it takes Quentin an entire month to realize that Julia had considered him a friend all along.

“I invited you to my birthday parties!”

“You invited everyone.”

Julia laughs, then, and Quentin falls in love with that laugh.

Once they settle into the accelerated course work, the two become joined at the hip.

Quentin hadn’t at all expected it, but Julia falls in love with Quentin as only a child can: fast, passionate, possessive. Julia wants Quentin around her all the time and Quentin basks in her attention and love. Julia drags Quentin into the small social world of second grade, and then she pulls him back for one-on-one Julia and Quentin adventures. Quentin prefers the latter. He, too, loves with the codependent crutch of childhood love, and as they grow it tangles them further and further together until their connection is no longer just a thread but an extension of themselves. It feels, to them, there is no Julia without Quentin, no Quentin without Julia.

And though none of their classmates understand their friendship, they know not to touch it, and those new kids who try to put a wedge between them to take one or the other as their own are in for an unpleasant surprise from a very protective Julia Wicker.

.

When Quentin is eight, his parents divorce.

It is his first experience of a depression that will plague him all his life. He blames himself. He knows he’s too smart, too quiet, too awkward for his age. He knows his schooling is the source of meetings and plans, extra work for his mom and dad when they aren’t like Julia’s parents, who thrive on their daughter’s genius and demand more. The Coldwaters are just normal people, they hadn’t expected a son who needed specialized learning plans and tests.

Julia cuddles him and tells him that divorce isn’t always bad.

He misses the almost wistful tone of her voice.

She starts bringing books she knows he likes with her wherever she goes, and when they’re together Julia will pull a book out on her lap, sidle up close, and they’ll sit and read and hold hands under the book’s binding. Quentin will lean his head on her shoulder and feel safe in the pages of different worlds.

.

When Julia is nine, her dad leaves.

He says, “I’ll be back, sweetheart,” and she can smell the booze on his breath. Julia doesn’t want her daddy to leave, because in a house of shouting matches and impossible expectations, he’s the  _nice_ one. But she won’t miss the smell of whiskey in the air at 10 in the morning, the whiplash of his drunken moods. So she doesn’t ask when he’ll come back. (She doesn’t see him for 3 years, not until her sister gets her drivers license and they go to see him in a lockdown psychiatric facility).

He gives her his favorite books from his childhood as a goodbye present.

“Fillory and Further?” she asks, holding up the first book.

“Just because your mom wants you to read high school reading material doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get to be a kid.”

“Enough, Joseph,” her mother snaps from the front door, arms crossed and eyes narrowed.

“Goodbye, ladybug,” her daddy says, and he kisses her on the cheek and is gone.

Julia takes the books upstairs and, with the thought of her mother’s disapproval on her mind, she begins to read.

The next morning she runs up to Quentin with Fillory and Further book 1 glued to her chest, eyes fever bright. “Q, you HAVE to read this!”

They read it together for the first time under the shade of a tree by the doors of the school building, squeals and whispers of delight punctuating every page.

Quentin doesn’t find out until two weeks later that Julia’s father is gone.

.

When Julia and Quentin are ten, they are invisible under a small end table.

They stay there for hours, rereading Fillory and Further, making up stories, calling each other Jane and Martin. Denise Wicker won’t let them go to Julia’s room alone together (how improper!), but she doesn’t want them underfoot either, so she doesn’t comment when her daughter ducks under a table like she’s a child and not a prodigy, and she allows Julia her strange relationship with the Coldwater boy. He may be a genius, but he’s strange and off putting.

Julia pretends to be oblivious to her mother’s disdain for Quentin. She doesn’t care either way. Quentin is hers, only hers, the one thing she has that hasn’t been in some way spoiled by her mother’s cloying, overbearing presence.

Julia is so thankful that Quentin doesn’t seem to care either.

They spend an entire afternoon drawing a beautiful map of Fillory on the underside of the end table, measuring for semi-accurate proportions and taking some liberties where not entirely sure. It’s their masterpiece.

Denise never notices because she would never get on her hands and knees in her own home. (Years later when her daughter steals her end table, it doesn’t even register).


	2. Chapter 2

When Quentin is eleven he watches Labyrinth, and he is very confused.

And then embarrassed.

He doesn’t know if he should tell Julia, doesn’t really fucking know why he got his first boner watching Labyrinth of all things, but he starts to prod a little. Tries to see if his best friend is feeling anything new.

Julia, ever perceptive, asks Quentin, “Did you hit puberty already or something?”

Quentin stumbles over an explanation and they go back to Quentin’s house and watch Labyrinth.

Julia tilts her head in contemplation the whole time she watches. Quentin spends his time watching her for the most part, because he’s afraid if he LOOKS it will happen again.

The movie ends and Julia says, “It was good. The girl was pretty. You got a boner from this?”

“Julia,” Quentin whines plaintively.

“Okay, okay. Um. Well I didn’t get it myself. Maybe we should do some research.”

Research is Julia’s solution to everything. 

Julia sneaks a book about human sexuality off a bookshelf in her house and are almost home free to their table when Denise catches them.

She grabs Julia’s arm so hard that Julia exclaims and glares. Quentin flutters around her feeling useless, wishing he could do something. He hates Julia’s mom.

“Julia Ogden Wicker, what do you THINK you’re doing!”

“I’m reading about sexuality, what does it look like?”

“Not in this house you’re not!” Denise shakes Julia a little, and Quentin grabs Julia’s other hand as if he can steady her.

“Jesus, I’m just curious! You don’t have to have a fucking cow.”

“Language! You are too young. I’m not going to let you turn into some hussy, especially when you already only spend your time with one boy!”

“Me?” Quentin squeaks.

Julia’s mother looks at him as if he’s a bug.

Quentin can see Julia going red in the face, he knows she’s about to BLOW when Mackenzie, Julia’s older sister, appears out of nowhere, rolling her eyes. “Lay off them, mom. It’s Quentin. Besides, you know Jules. She’s probably just trying to get a head start for sex ED classes. Stop manhandling your daughter in front of our guest.”

Denise looks at Mackenzie, then at Quentin, then at her grip on Julia’s arm. She lets go and then grabs the book before marching off.

Quentin has to let go of Julia’s hand so she can rub her arm, but he puts a hand carefully on her shoulder.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Fucking bitch.”

“You know better,” Mackenzie says, eying them both. “What did you even want to know anyway?”

“What about the movie Labyrinth could give Q a boner.”

Mackenzie stares and then bursts into laughter. Quentin wants to die.

“Okay, give me a sec. Go under your dumb table, I’ll be right back.”

Quentin and Julia retreat to their safe hideout. Julia looks grumpy, and Quentin wants to say something but doesn’t know what. 

Mackenzie returns with her iPod. She hands each of them an earbud.

“What’s this?”

“Just listen.”

They listen to David Bowie’s entire cover of Under Pressure. Quentin’s hands tighten on his knees.

Mackenzie smiles knowingly.

“He’s really hot. In an alien kind of way.”

“But I’m a boy?”

“Boys can like boys. Girls can like girls too. Both is also an option.”

Julia snaps her fingers. “That makes sense. Why didn’t mom just let us know that?”

“She’s a bitch.”

Julia and Quentin both nod. When they notice, they both let out anxious giggles.

After Mackenzie leaves, Julia and Quentin lie back and look at Fillory, their heads touching.

“I don’t think it’s really time.”

“Huh?” Julia turns to look at Quentin.

“Puberty. I don’t think it’s happening yet. I think we’ve still got time to be in Fillory.”

Julia’s smile is gentle. “I think we’ll always have Fillory, no matter what.”

Quentin hopes that’s true.

.

Julia and Quentin are middle schoolers, and they are constantly getting into trouble.

It’s Julia’s ideas, mostly. She’s become radical, in her “old age”. Believes that knowledge should be free, believes they have the right to free speech and assembly and all that jazz.

Sure, Julia thinks most of her peers besides Quentin are morons, but they deserve _basic_ human rights.

She liberates test answers and confiscated items, she leads little protests in the school. Quentin is always by her side. He loves being her sidekick. He loves the adventure and excitement of being on the side of justice and vigilantism. Life with Julia is never dull.

Quentin starts expecting Julia to get bored of him as they near teenagedom, but she never wavers in her love for him, and he never wavers in his devotion to her.

.

When Julia is twelve, she falls out of a tree and breaks her arm.

She was pretending to be Jane Chatwin making parlay with the dryad of the One-Way Forest when she suddenly loses her balance and tumbles to the grass below. However soft grass is, it doesn’t save her, and she shrieks as Quentin comes running.

It is not Julia’s finest hour, but she comes out of the hospital with a cast and it’s signed every inch within 24 hours. She lets Q sign first of course and when his face is long with guilt she reminds him in a teasing voice that Martin is never the one who gets the scrapes, it’s always Jane.

It doesn’t register that anything is different until a few weeks later when she goes with her mother and sister into the city to go to the Met Opera. Her mom had scored the best Mezzanine seats for herself and some of her friends, and Julia and Mackenzie had been brought on as prodigious ornamentation. It was something they were both used to at this point in their lives and Julia was familiar enough with the opera they were going to see that she felt comfortable enough to tune it out and carry on appropriately dull conversation when asked.

It comes as a shock when Julia leans over the banister and her head swims and her heart jumps into her throat. She flings an arm back, her broken arm, and is fortunate that it’s Mackenzie she catches in the chest. Mackenzie grabs her and hides the faux pas, excusing herself gracefully and saying she and her younger sister have to go take a powder.

Julia is able to hold it together until she’s in the bathroom and then she’s breathing hard and fast, cheeks blooming red and eyes starting to swim.

She has never felt such primal fear before. She’s prided herself in her logic, her ability to distinguish silly fears from real ones. Now she can’t claim such logic.

“What was that, Julia?”

Julia hiccups a few times before saying, “It was so high.”

Mackenzie gives her an incredulous look. “You aren’t afraid of heights.”

“No duh Mackenzie,” Julia snaps.

But she is, now.

Her cast comes off, but the fear lingers. She can’t shake it, no matter how hard she tries. It upsets her like nothing has before in her short life. She is INDIGNANT that such a commonplace phobia would settle into her spectacular mind. She is BETTER than this. But the fear does not care.

Quentin holds her hand when they go up high and in his clumsy Quentin way he tries to make sure no one figures out that brave Julia, his brave Jane, is now afraid of heights. In their small world, Julia Wicker is above reproach, and no one does.

Julia does not DO slow. She tries to force her fear away. It doesn’t work, and she is furious.

One day she and Quentin are braving a trip to her attic and she’s breathing harshly as she climbs the ladder, her eyes are spotty as she crawls over the edge. She repeats a mantra.

_I am brave. I will not get hurt. I am brave. I will not get hurt._

It does not work.

Then Quentin slips and bangs his chin on the ladder, and Julia’s hand shoots out to grab his wrist. He looks up at her and grins. “Thank you, Jane.”

Julia smiles back and her mantra changes.

_I am brave. Quentin will not get hurt. I am brave. Quentin will not get hurt._

It works.

.

When Quentin is thirteen, he thinks he is in love with his best friend Julia Wicker.

It starts when Julia kisses Henry Starling.

It’s Julia’s first kiss and she’s excited. She says things like “Henry was adequate” and “as first kisses go I think I did very well”.

Quentin is angry. He pouts, he’s snappish, he insults Henry.

Julia doesn’t notice.

How dare someone be so intimate with Julia when Julia is his? How dare Julia kiss someone else and not him! Julia is his young love, and will always be his first love, but it is deep and forever, and all the stories claim that love is for kissing, for marriage and kids and sex.

It is tragic that no one tells Quentin Coldwater that forever love comes in all forms and the form it takes with Julia is not less or wrong for being the beautiful bond it is, because the confusion and frustration will plague him for years to come.

As is, six weeks after Julia’s first kiss, Quentin shares a kiss with Gabby Leuinstein.

Julia congratulates him. He is bitter. But then Julia kisses his cheek and says, “And one from me!”

Quentin leans his head on her shoulder and says, “Maybe I should have waited.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here are the first two chapters of my long epic Coldwicker fic! These babies are my true OTP of the show and I could gush about them FOREVER. I hope you enjoy :)


	3. Chapter 3

Julia and Quentin are 14 and they are freshman in high school.

For Julia, high school is like a small wonderland. So many things to learn, so many people to meet, so many activities to do. Sure, she’s leagues beyond most of her peers in terms of curriculum and she knows that most of the stuff her peers talk about are frivolous at best and cruel at worst, but she’s a natural at the social game and she stays kind, she stays Julia. Her classmates love her.

For Quentin, high school is like a small battleground. He goes in with Julia at one side, but his other side is unshielded and he’s hit from every angle not blocked by Julia’s bubble. People think he’s weird, they avoid talking to him and ignore him like he’s Julia’s more solid shadow. They think his magic tricks are lame, they call him a nerd even though Julia is just as nerdy, and Quentin flounders.

Julia is ashamed to say that it takes her longer than it should have to notice Quentin is struggling. She’s been having such a grand time. 

Extending her bubble to cover Quentin too isn’t really possible. She tries. Oh by God does she try. All Julia ever says about Quentin is glowing praise, she always brings him into conversations and takes him with her to parties and events. But Julia can’t be there always, and when Quentin is without her his classmates ignore him, rebuff him, and on occasion are outright mean.

Quentin tries not to bother Julia with it, because the few times he does mention it Julia goes on one of her crusades and blood is shed.

No one insults her Q and gets away with it.

But Quentin doesn’t want to be this burden, this pet she has to protect. He keeps many things to himself.

He doesn’t fit in. He has never fit in anywhere, only in the spot at Julia’s side. And while that spot feels like home, while he wouldn’t trade it for the world, it’s painful to watch as Julia flourishes in every setting when he can’t even feel at peace in his own household with his father.

Quentin would think she was really magic if he didn’t know that Julia doesn’t fit in with her family either. No one knows Julia the way he does, sees the human that she is. No one but Quentin has that privilege.

Quentin dives back into Fillory in a way that he hasn’t since he was 11. Julia joins him because she loves him and she loves Fillory, even as the real world calls a siren song to her. Quentin calls her Jane at school and she answers, and their peers roll their eyes. She calls him Martin and their peers think how cute it is that she puts up with his childish ways.

Julia is aware of the hypocrisy and it grates at her, so she tries to tell everyone how wonderful the Fillory books are. She loans her copies to her other friends, and suddenly a wave of people are checking out the books from the school library and local library. For a month and a half, Fillory is all anyone talks about in Julia’s presence. They are so desperate for her approval they pretend to love everything about Fillory. Julia is thrilled. She wants to believe that people aren’t doing all of this just for her.

(At the same time, she loves people loving her. She thrives on the feeling of belonging.)

Quentin is thrilled, then confused, then frustrated beyond all measure.

Fillory is precious to him, something sacred. His peers pretending to care about it is an affront to him and to Ember and Umber and Jane and Martin and Rupert. It has meant everything to Quentin for so many years.

He’s mad that Julia has tarnished their thing.

It’s the first time Quentin remembers truly being mad at Julia. But he doesn’t say so. Quentin grew up in a home of silent anger, of unsaid feelings. He does not know the first thing about how to express his disappointment and rage.

The fad dies down quickly, though not quickly enough for Quentin. Soon it is back to Quentin and Julia and Fillory. Quentin buries the hurt so that he can just be Martin again and she can be Jane, and everything can go back to the way that it always has been.

.

Julia and Quentin are in sophomore year and they make a dance for the talent show.

It is dorky and silly and so very _them_.

Quentin isn’t sure he wants to perform it, but Julia ropes him into it, and that’s how they wind up onstage dancing and singing, hips thrusting, hair swishing, a confused crowd cheering on Julia.

Julia launches herself into Quentin’s arms when they finish and Quentin spins her around, laughing.

It is their favorite memory of high school.

.

Julia is fifteen going on sixteen and she loses her virginity to a guy named Bobby Gallagher.

It’s not an experiment in the way that her first kiss was. Julia is infatuated with Bobby. He’s in all of her AP classes and is on the basketball team. Julia knows that high school romances rarely are forever, but in the face of teenage love she forgets. Julia spends as much time with Bobby as she does with Q. She giggles to her girlfriends, she walks down the hall with him hand and hand, she curls up in his lap when they’re at parties.

She’s excited and anxious for her first time. When it does happen, it’s at her house, with candles lit and flowers on the end table.

He definitely doesn’t prime her enough and it hurts more than it could have. But she’s a girl in love and she cuddles up to him after and says that it was perfect.

Then everything goes wrong.

.

Quentin is sixteen and he is hospitalized. 

It started earlier, so much earlier than they think, but the last twig shaken from the dam of his spiraling thoughts is finding out that Julia lost her virginity to Bobby Gallagher and he finds out from another kid at school three weeks later.

It feels like a betrayal, to hear it from someone else.

Julia is embarrassed and stammers an excuse for not telling him.

He actually yells at her.

She yells back.

He skips her 16th birthday party in his anger.

Two days later, he’s hoarding pills and his dad catches him. He punches his father in the arm and in the face, and he breaks down sobbing.

It is not Julia’s fault. But they are so young, and neither of them understand.

Quentin blames her. 

Julia blames herself.

They are Quentin and Julia, and they have never had to explain themselves to each other. So they don’t know how.

Julia drives to visit him with her newly acquired license. She hugs him so tightly, he’s sure she’ll leave bruises. “I love you so much, Q. Please, please get better.”

Quentin closes his eyes and hugs her back. Loves her so much back.

They don’t know how to communicate about some things, but other things they are in perfect sync. Unspoken, unacknowledged, they never speak of the breakdown being Julia’s fault, because they want to keep each other more than they want to deal with the fallout.

.

Quentin loses his own virginity the next school year. It’s with a nice girl named Claire Owens and he’s very anxious and sweet and attentive. And he likes her, he really really does. She’s nerdy, like him, and they date for a few weeks.

But Quentin isn’t very good at keeping relationships. It’s hard for him to be loose and free, and it’s hard for him to be kind to himself. He winds up squirrelling away when he thinks that he’s not good enough. Which is often.

Julia likes Claire and tells Quentin so all the time. Quentin has learned to tolerate Bobby. It’s mutual tolerance. They go on one double date to a movie and it’s pretty weird.

Julia and Quentin wind up laughing about it and agreeing that double dates aren’t going to be a thing they do often.

Quentin knows that Julia is desperate to make sure that he feels included, never left behind. He wants to explain that he doesn’t feel that way, because he’s realized that Bobby is not someone that will be around forever. Bobby isn’t good enough for Julia. Quentin hasn’t met someone yet good enough for Julia Wicker.

Maybe in college they’ll actually meet people who get them.

.

Julia is 18 and there is a long list of things she wins.

Valedictorian, homecoming queen, prom queen, student body president, debate team captain, and concertmaster of the orchestra.

She gets a full ride to Columbia, which she feels pretty bad about since her family is definitely rich enough to afford Columbia. Quentin gets one, too, which is good because she would have given hers up for him.

Quentin is the happiest she’s seen him in ages, and once they get their acceptance letters high school doesn’t even matter. Not the popularity or the politics. Julia and Quentin spend nearly all their time discussing the future, _their_ future and what will happen.

Julia dumps Bobby sometime in February. It isn’t even a blip on her radar.

.

Julia and Quentin are 18 and they meet James.

Here’s the thing about James. He is likeable, he is kind, he is smart as fuck, and he is instantly drawn to _both_ of them.

Never forget that James loves them both, because it is something that they don’t always remember.

The duo becomes a trio.

Quentin is scared that Julia loves James more.

Julia is worried that James will think she is childish if she continues to allow herself the joys of magic and fantasy.

The unspoken things between them grow, become a chasm that they don’t know how to cross.

Their love is still there, still strong, hops the chasm like it isn’t there. That doesn’t change the fact that it is, and that other things can’t cross. Thoughts, emotions, words they can’t say.

Quentin, so excited for college, so happy for his world to open before him, wilts. It is not what he wanted, does not cure his sadness and ache in the way he had hoped.

It is all he can do to keep from drowning. Julia pulls him behind her as best she can, never letting go.

.

Quentin and Julia apply to Yale. 

Quentin has long stopped telling Julia about his trips to the hospital. She knows, though. She always does. She’s not sure whether she has permission to talk about it anymore, so she stays close. She stays with him. 

Julia is scared to lose Quentin. She’s scared she’ll lose him to his sadness. She’s scared she’ll lose him if she pushes too hard.

Quentin sets up a meeting with a Yale alumnus. Julia goes with him. She is the angel protecting his future.

They part with angry words.

And all at once, things change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much Library Fic Rec, for adding me to the collection <3 Because I'm so honored, here is the next chapter!


	4. Chapter 4

Quentin is 23 and is accepted into Brakebills.

He faints at the exam but that does not seem to effect his acceptance. 

Julia does not get accepted and it is the first thing that Quentin ever remembers her failing at.

But he doesn’t have time to dwell.

Suddenly there are new people to know, new things to learn. His mind is constantly busy. He reads like he’s been starved all his life. He practices his hand movements every waking moment. When he’s not relentlessly working he is hanging out with Eliot and Margo, who force him to have a social life in a way that Julia never did.

The chasm between Quentin and Jules is physical now, too, and it is not something that can be ignored. It’s a gaping wound. Quentin fills the chasm with the knowledge that he belongs somewhere other than with one single person for the first time in his life.

And for a time, it’s enough to ignore the fact that he is missing his best friend.

.

Julia is 22 and is not accepted into Brakebills.

Quentin is, and the mean and angry part of her snaps, “How could he have been accepted and not me?”

Those first months a fog over her mind clouds everything, makes her feel like she’s moving through thick soup. She forgets to eat, forgets to shower, forgets to change her clothes. She searches the internet for any hints at Brakebills.

When her conviction fades, when she starts to forget the wisps of memory she has of the test, she adds another tick mark to her arm, another branch on the trunk of her Brakebills scar. She’d never thought of herself as someone who would self harm, but here she is.

She calls Quentin but after her first five voicemails go unanswered she gets the message. She stops.

Julia loses magic and Quentin in the same moment and her soul is ripping into pieces.

.

Quentin and Julia see each other for the first time since the entrance exam at Julia’s 23rd birthday party. 

They can barely look at one another. They hug and for the first time in their lives it feels awkward and unnatural.

Julia says, “I need you to tell them they were wrong about me.”

Quentin tries to lie but Julia knows him better than anyone and he gives up without much struggle.

She makes sparks and he pities her. It grates on Julia’s nerves. Quentin has never pitied her. He has no right.

The chasm between them isn’t physical in that moment, but it has never been wider.

.

When Julia is attacked in the bar bathroom on her birthday, she isn’t thinking “How could this be happening to me”, she’s thinking “This is my life now, this is what my life is.”

She hates Pete, but she follows him, because what else can she do?

.

Quentin is almost expelled and he calls Julia, finally understanding how she must be feeling. He feels like he’s being slowly pulled apart, drawn and quartered, and he knows that he will die without magic. It’s not a guess, not a worry, it’s a fact. He was so close to dying without Brakebills, without magic. Going back, being hollowed out with all the knowledge and beauty and wonder he had seen since arriving at Brakebills, he wouldn’t last longer than a few months. Life without magic was meaningless for him. All he’d had to grasp onto was Julia, and he’d finally made her hate him. There would be nothing, now. 

He is not expelled. He forgets the panic, he forgets how Julia must feel.

When they see each other next, he tells her that she’s better than the hedgewitches, she should be at Yale.

“Stop slumming because you’re pissed that you lost for once in your life!”

He regrets the way he said it as soon as the words are out of his mouth. He may mean it, but he shouldn’t have said it like that. “I’m sorry, but I mean it. You could really get hurt doing this shit, and for what?” Another flare of anger goes through him, remembering their parting words before the exam that changed it all. “Grow up.”

Julia stares at him, wounded and angry eyes. “Do you love magic? Is it in your soul? Is it like the secret heart of what you always were?”

Quentin can’t reply. He remembers, briefly, the idea of magic being ripped away from him. He knows what she means, knows it as a part of himself. But she must be wrong, she must be, because Brakebills would know.

She walks away and doesn’t look back.

He goes back to Brakebills and gets absolutely plastered. There is a part of him that knows Julia is right. He has treated her horribly. If she had gotten into Brakebills, she would have fought for him. He’s selfish, he’s jealous, he’s hoarding a secret because he has never in his life felt special and he wants it all to himself. 

He doesn’t know how it got so bad. He truly doesn’t, because he is Quentin Coldwater and she is Julia Wicker and they have always been together. It is his fault. 

He doesn’t know how to fix it.

.

Julia almost kills her very best friend, and in the process almost kills herself.

She was so furious at the way he had spoken to her, at how he had looked _down_ on her. She had wanted to hurt him. More than that, she had wanted to _wound_ him.

Julia knew what Quentin’s worst fear was. She knows him so well, she could easily tear him down. She had never ever wanted to, before. Now, now she knows how to hold herself _back_.

She tailor makes the prison in his mind so that he’s desperate, so that it’s bad enough that the Dean will have to act quickly.

She visits to see the crushed look on his face, because she wants to see him feel the way that she does.

When she realizes just how bad it is, she hates herself.

Julia wakes up, the magic making her whole body crackle. She relishes it for a moment before asking Marina if he’ll be okay.

The response is devastating. She doesn’t quite believe it, because she would never do something so permanent. Julia would rather die than have a world without Quentin in it.

Julia can’t face it, at first, and goes with Marina to Brakebills to break in. But the moment that Kady tells her it’s bad, the moment that she knows it’s truly fatal, she _runs_ to the cottage.

She’s sobbing, begging the Dean to help him, somebody FUCKING HELP HIM, she’s willing to tear out her own soul to save him, and he wakes.

And she runs.

It’s all for nothing. Marina kicks her out of the safe house. Quentin will never forgive her. Quentin should never forgive her.

She hates him. She hates herself more.

. 

Quentin can’t believe that Julia would do this to him.

Even at the worst, he had believed that she would not go for the throat. They are still Quentin and Julia.

But that has changed, and he is crushed.

He is angry and _wounded_. All his fears and his hatred of himself brought to the forefront of his mind, a prison that she made for him but a prison that he has lived in so often before. How could she? How _could_ she?

.

Julia fucks Pete for magic, and she hates herself.

Julia crawls to another safe house and hates herself. 

Julia loses James and she hates herself.

Julia is a master at anything she ever tries. Julia Wicker doesn’t DO slow.

It takes her only months to hate herself at the level it took Quentin years to accomplish.

.

Quentin loves Alice Quinn.

It does not escape Quentin that Alice shares many traits with ~~Julia~~ his childhood crush. She is a genius, she is fast, she is talented, she is driven. But she is different, too. Alice is awkward where Jules was gregarious, Alice is sharp where Julia is (was?) soft.

Alice is not Julia. He does not wish she was Julia because Alice feels like everything he’s ever looked for in a girlfriend.

He does not wish Alice was Julia because he misses _Julia_.

But he cannot allow himself to. She hurt him too much.

.

Julia sees herself in Hanna too much, the addiction and the desperation. When Hanna dies, Julia sees her future in front of her. She sees herself dying with no one, all of her bridges burned, and fucking and selling herself and selling her loved ones for a fix.

Mackenzie picks her up from jail and the first thing Julia does is grab a bottle.

Mackenzie reminds her that mom exists, that she-demon, and that if Denise Wicker wants, Julia will be locked up with the key thrown away. She agrees to rehab.

She wants to get out. She wants to be better than the road she is going down.

She is drowning and trying so hard to surface. Richard drags her back down again.

.

Quentin goes to Plover’s house feeling like he could never be happier, and leaves feeling like he could never feel worse.

Christopher Plover was an unrepentant pedophile who raped Martin Chatwin every chance he got. He stood by as his sister murdered two innocent children. He is the Beast, trying to kill Quentin and his friends.

Quentin has now been betrayed by the two heroes of his young life. Julia and Christopher Plover. He feels like he can depend on nothing, on no one.

What if Alice betrays him too? Eliot and Margo? Who in the whole world can he trust?

He isn’t alone, but he feels alone. He holds onto Alice too tightly. He holds onto Eliot and Margo too much.

He betrays Alice first, before she can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any dialogue from the show is used purely for fun! I take no credit for show dialogue!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MAJOR TRIGGER WARNINGS:
> 
> For depictions of Julia's rape.

Julia can’t shake the feeling that Richard is using her in the same way as Pete, the same as Marina. She knows it’s different, because he’s never tried to fuck her and his intentions are good.

But Julia had almost been out, and she’s not drowning, not really, but that edge of addiction is still there and Julia wonders if Richard cares.

The other members of Free Trader Beowulf, though, she loves them so much. They have heard some of the things she’s done, the way she’s betrayed and how she feels about herself, and they forgive her and accept her. When she meets Silver and Menolly and Bender she feels at home. She feels loved and like, maybe, she can learn to love herself again.

And then Asmodeus, the one who she had become closest to in the group chat, turns out to be Kady and she remembers why she shouldn’t be loved.

Julia has to close her eyes, take deep breaths. She explains what happened as best she can. Kady agrees to work with her for the sake of the group and that is all Julia can ask for.

Julia loved Asmodeus. Julia loves Kady. They do magic together and it feels like the most wonderful magic that Julia has ever worked. Kady starts to act like she’s forgiving Julia. That seems impossible. Julia doesn’t _deserve_ Kady’s forgiveness. But Kady works with her, they talk, they learn together. 

A hermit heals Kady’s heart and they get the final piece of the puzzle to invoke Our Lady Underground. They will all be healed. They will all be saved.

Julia is grateful, more grateful than she could ever have words to express. She sleeps with Richard because he saved her life, and for the first time in forever she has a home.

.

Julia is 23 years old. She watches her new family die and she is raped by Reynard the Fox.

She knows something is wrong before they do. The energy manifesting is not warm and good: it is jarring and malevolent. She stops them in time to see the statue begin to weep blood.

“Julia you stupid witch. You can’t unring a bell.”

Richard dies. Silver, Menolly, and Bender die.

Kady is under the table, her and Q’s table, and tells her to run.

She can't. She _won't_.

Julia steps in front of Kady. “Don’t you fucking touch her.”

Reynard throws her to the ground. He tells her that when she prayed to OLU he sensed her. He smelled her. He was called because of _her_.

This is all her fault.

He flips her over and she sees that Kady ran. Sees, peeking out of the bottom of the table, her drawing of Fillory, her safe place with Q.

She can’t reach the safety of the table. She turns away in shame.

It isn’t quick. It’s painful every second. Her cheek is slipping back and forth in Richard’s blood. She tries to go away in her head but her head has never been a daydreaming safe haven. It is too busy, too aware, and it keeps her alert for every second in a mistaken act of cruelty.

She does not try to think of Kady. She does not try to think of Quentin. It feels like if she did, it would be inviting them into this horror.

When he’s gone she pulls out her phone. Thinks of calling Quentin, her finger hovering over his name. Shame and guilt rip at her heart and she scrolls away from his name.

Julia calls Marina and asks for help, because Marina can’t judge her for this. Marina has blood on her hands, too.

She’s surprised by how willing to help Marina is. Maybe somewhere under the evil there are morals. There is a heart.

She asks Marina for a beautiful lie and Marina gives it to her.

.

Julia is 23 years old and she meets a goddess who heals her.


	6. Chapter 6

Quentin messes everything up.

He is stranded on earth and his friends are stranded in the Nietherlands. 

He wants. Fucking. Answers.

He goes to the Dean and puts a truth serum in his tea.

He demands to know what was different this time.

“You have been to Brakebills for 39 cycles. Julia Wicker has also been to Brakebills for those 39 other cycles. She is the thing that Jane Chatwin changed.”

Quentin’s heart stops.

“39 lifetimes I had to teach you entitled miserable brats,” Fogg grouses. “But at least there was always Julia. My Knowledge student protege. Remarkable in every timeline, even when she would lose focus for your doomed quest. Can you imagine my delight when I realized Jane’s next cockamamie plan involved leaving out the one of you I could even stand? Well, it worked out just as well as all the other plans. And here we are, a fortieth time, our last, and I’m fucking blind and you’re fucking dead. I can’t even say any of this was worth it.” The Dean takes a long swing of alcohol and leans back. 

Quentin leaves without a word.

.

Quentin knocks on Julia’s door.

They stand on opposite sides of Julia’s living room and stare at one another. Julia had backed up until the physical distance felt appropriate for the emotional one. 

They had wounded each other with such skilled, deliberate hands, in ways only people who deeply knew each other’s hearts could. Their remorse radiates off them.

Quentin tells Julia what the Dean had told him.

“I was at Brakebills.”

When Julia finds out she was supposed to be there, there is a spark of vindication that blazes in her chest, strong and frustrated and angry, but it fades for the most part when she thinks of FTB, her family and the mission she’s been sent on.

When Quentin apologizes and says that he should have believed her, Julia’s heart heals one of its bigger cracks. Because _that_ had been a big part of the pain. Quentin not believing her, Quentin not fighting for her. Being rejected from Brakebills had rocked her world and the foundation of her being, but Quentin rejecting her had turned her foundation to sand. 

She apologizes for the horror she had inflicted on him, his darkest fears made reality in his head. Going for the throat.

“So how do we fix this?”

“I don’t know. I just know that I might get killed soon and I don’t really want to die being mad at my oldest friend.”

“I really fucking missed you.”

“Yeah, me too actually.”

Julia closes the gap between them, grabs him into the hug she’s needed for months now. They hold each other so tight it hurts, but it’s a good kind of hurt. Julia buries her face in Q’s neck and closes her eyes. She breathes deep and her heart's cracks continue to mend.

“You smell the same.” The same Quentin, a cornerstone of the foundation of Julia Wicker. She feels like she’s standing on solid ground for the first time since she failed the Brakebills exam.

They talk about what’s going on, what needs to be done. Julia gushes about OLU and sees the skepticism on Quentin’s face. She forgives him for it because she had been queen skeptic for ages, even after she’d prayed and been levitated in the air by Our Lady Underground herself. 

Her mission from OLU could wait for a little bit while she helped Quentin.

Slowly a bubble of excitement swells in her chest. “You want me to come to Fillory with you?”

She grabs Quentin’s hand and pulls him under their table. He’s surprised she has it, and Julia doesn’t blame him. She’d “given up” the Fillory stuff. But the table wasn’t about Fillory. It was about them. Her safe haven with her best friend.

They lie head to head, close enough for their thoughts to jump from one’s ear and climb into the other’s ear. It feels as natural as anything.

They work together and they figure out what to do.

.

Quentin’s guilt mounts as they enter the Physical Cottage and sees Julia’s face. She’s awed and despite what she said about it being fate that she wasn’t accepted so she could meet her goddess, he knows that she’s envious, can read it in her body movement, in her face.

She sees the pictures on Margo’s vanity and says, “They look like fun.”

Quentin’s guilt fills him head to toe. They were supposed to all be friends, be a family, and Julia had been left out in the cold on purpose, had suffered isolation and hedgewitches to get “stronger”. It was cruel and unfair.

Now the people who were her friends in thirty-nine other lifetimes were strangers to her. Some even hated her and it was his fault.

Quentin will make it up to her. He has to.

.

They take a deep breath, Quentin puts his hand on the time travel machine and Julia puts her hand on top of his, and they pull the lever together.

They are thrown back into World War II England holding hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter, but they're together again! For now.


	7. Chapter 7

Julia and Quentin are the Witch and the Fool.

They’d walked into Fillory together holding hands and had both been teary eyed and holding back jumping up and down, arm flapping, squealing excitement. But it had been there under the surface. It sucked that they didn’t have time to fangasm and had to keep moving on their quest, but by God they were at least going to take a second to stare at Whitespire and marvel at the world around them. They were Jane and Martin and they were home.

Then they are actually part of the books and they can’t hide their smiles from a very indignant Jane who can’t understand why these strangers are giddy at seeing her in an enchanted trap. She flounces off as soon as she’s free, and really Quentin can’t blame her for leaving these weirdos in the woods.

They encounter Martin and Quentin is a little put out by the divergence from canon (he’s not supposed to be there), but his heart goes out to poor young Martin Chatwin. 

He’d told Julia what they’d discovered at Polliver’s house and she’d been crushed. But it didn’t effect her in the way it had him, and that made sense. She hadn’t been there. She hadn’t seen. All those children, all those memories, all that pain trapped in a house that could never heal.

Martin helps them meet a blacksmith who can help them make a knife out of moonstones and promise him a seat at court. A problem for future Q and Jules.

The three of them stumble on Ember’s temple and Quentin and Julia have to take a moment to admire.

Then the clocks start to go haywire.

Martin bolts and Quentin can’t stop him. He and Julia brace themselves for dealing with the Watcherwoman.

It turns out Jane Chatwin had many secret identities.

Quentin finds out he is _not_ chosen. He is the volunteer tomato. Something about that is comforting, even as he deals with disappointment that he is not chosen. Because he _is_ special. He just keeps coming. He keeps finding Fillory, loving Fillory, fighting for Fillory. It’s not a destiny. It’s just him, who he is. There’s something beautiful in that.

Jane freezes Julia.

She explains that there’s something off with her memories, something wrong. Quentin’s gut fills with foreboding. He knew instinctually something wasn’t right. Something that had been bothering him. 

“If you still care for her, protect her.”

Quentin will always care about her, even when he’s mad at her, and he will always protect her, so he’s slightly upset when Jane asks him to do this. But it’s important, and so he agrees.

Jane transports them to Fillory in their time and it’s awful.

They meet up with the rest of the gang and everyone is glaring at Julia. Quentin wants to protest, to explain, but words die on his lips seeing Alice and the way she looks at him.

He’s messed up everything so badly. Where does he even start?

.

 

Quentin and Julia go to Ember to ask him for enough power to hold the Leo Blade, because none of them have the power to do so. Eliot had to marry the blacksmith's daughter and the others are off to save Victoria. Quentin is happy to have another adventure with Julia. He can keep an eye on her.

Ember gives them a vial of his semen and then “unencumbers” Julia’s mind. Quentin tries to stop him as best he can without incurring the wrath of a literal actual god, but he fails. Again.

Julia falls to the floor, crumbling, and he rushes to her. He knows instantly that it’s worse than he could imagine, something that has destroyed a part her. She scrambles to her feet and runs out of the temple. Quentin chases after her.

He reaches for her and she pushes him away with shaking, skittering hands. “Don’t touch me, please, please don’t touch me.” Quentin wants to give her space but he’s so afraid if he lets go she’ll fall.

“Please take my memories.”

Quentin hates himself for not being able to help. He is terrified, because Julia had fought so hard against memory wipes and suddenly she wants one.

They get back to the group and Julia disappears into a room and locks the door.

Quentin has to give her space, he knows this, but that same space is killing him. He can’t fail her again.

.

Quentin hears what happened to Julia and Kady and all he wants to do is hold her and never let her go. It breaks his heart into smaller splinters as he hears how she thinks she’s stupid, how she blames herself for their deaths and her own rape.

“It’s not your fault, you were duped.”

He knows that Julia doesn’t believe him.

Quentin promises Julia that he will help her in whatever way he can. He will help Julia feel safe again. He owes her so much, and he loves her even more.

He wants to hug her, but he keeps his hands to himself. Quentin doesn’t know if he has the right to touch her, anymore.

.

The Leo Blade is in Julia’s hands.

Quentin watched as Alice choked on her own blood, as Martin Chatwin threw Eliot and Margo’s skulls into a wall, as Penny’s hands were severed from his arms.

And now he watches as his best friend in the world holds a knife to Martin’s throat. She’d jumped in before the Beast could hurt Quentin.

“Jules,” he pleads.

She can’t look at him.

“ _Julia_.”

_Please don’t do this, please. I know you don’t trust me now, but please._

She still can’t look at him. He knows her so well. Knows what guilt looks like on her. Knows her determination will override it.

He forgives her before they even teleport away.

He’s mad, he’s scared, he’s so hurt and his friends are dead and dying. But he forgives her, just the same.

Quentin runs for help.


	8. Chapter 8

Julia finds herself thrown into a child’s ball pit. Martin is laughing up a storm and she wants to strangle him already, but he can kill a god. She needs him to beat Reynard.

She feels bad, truly, but Jane Chatwin had made certain that those friends of Quentin’s were not friends of hers, and she does not mourn them like she should. A tiny bitter part of her that still clings to Brakebills wonders what the other Julias would think of her, sacrificing her best friends that way. But Julia does not know those classmates of Quentin’s and is not those Julias.

A tragedy that Julia still does not know how to cope with.

But she’d never let it get so far that Q would get hurt. She waited until Martin was distracted to spring.

She draws up a Word as Bond to seal a deal with The Beast. He cannot hurt her. He cannot hurt her loved ones. She puts in specific names, because she worries that’s too vague. If any of the Brakebills kids got out alive, she puts their names in, because her loved ones are down to Q and Kady at this point and the others won’t be protected by vagueness.

She owes them at _least_ that.

.

Quentin is crowned a King of Fillory and it’s his childhood dream come true. Part of it, anyway.

All of them come out alive, a miracle of Alice’s god powers, and Eliot chooses Margo, Quentin, and Alice as his fellow king and queens.

Quentin nearly bursts into tears, he’s so happy.

The one thing missing is Julia.

When he played as a child, they were together, crowning each other. Flowing, flowery words on their tongue, kissing each other’s cheeks, bowing and curtsying and dancing around the backyard.

Quentin is officially a King of Fillory, and Julia is not a Queen.

That seems wrong.

.

Martin tries to convince Julia to take out her Shade.

She says no at first, but the nightmares rip through her psyche and she asks what it would take.

He pulls her Shade away from her chest, just a little. It feels like small hands are grasping at her heart, trying to stay.

Her young hands. Hands that held Quentin’s hands in them.

“Put it back, Martin. I need it.”

It’s the part of her that loves, the part of her that cares, the part that knows what has meaning.

She needs it, even though it hurts.

.

Secret words on a bathroom mirror bring Julia and Quentin together again.

It is just an address at first, written in Q’s handwriting. But he signs it -M, and that little letter communicates so many things.

One: Quentin is okay enough that he’s referring to himself as Martin, a name that had a new connotation these days. It means he’s willing to revert back to their childhood nicknames to convey information.

Two: If Quentin is M, then she is still J, for Jane not Julia. She is still his Jane.

She breathes a sigh of relief.

When Julia and Quentin meet up she is not expecting the hug he immediately wraps her in. She had abandoned him, left his friends for dead, and he sees her and the relief in his voice when he says “Jules” and holds her tight is jarring. 

She doesn’t deserve it.

But she can’t back down, not after the decisions she’s made. Killing Reynard is too important.

They start to fight almost immediately, and Julia hates how natural it’s starting to feel, being on opposite sides.

Quentin warns her to not be near the Beast when they make their move and Julia finds herself threatening him. She hates herself for it, but her course is set.

She pays him back how she can, warning him about Martin’s curse on the castle, whatever it may be.

He thanks her. Then he throws his hand up, eyes bright with sorrow and he says, “This is-" before trailing off, locking eyes with her for the briefest of moments. He doesn’t have to say. This is unfair. This is not right. They should be fighting together and having each other’s backs and not standing apart, not threatening or arguing. They belong together.

“I know,” she says so softly it might not reach his ears, but she knows he heard her regardless. Her heart is screaming it.

They part, again.

.

They teleport The Beast to Fillory to kill him with the Rhinemann Ultra and Julia is trapped in the crosshairs.

Quentin prays she will duck, prays she will do something, but the Rhinemann Ultra will fry everything in the triangle of shields they have made and Q has to drop his because he can’t, can’t, _can’t_ see Julia burned alive before his very eyes. He throws down his hands and GRABS her, pulls her out of the line of fire, holds her close as Alice misses her shot and The Beast flees.

Julia pulls away from him and she starts yelling about how he had them _both_ , had the Beast and had Reynard, how she was so close.

Both of their plans were ruined in an instant.

Quentin wants to say something, stop the fighting, but Penny has travelled her away before he can, and she is gone and everything is worse.


	9. Chapter 9

Julia finds Kady in a drug den and hates herself for not finding her sooner.

Marina was dead when she managed to get back to the apartment. Another death, her fault.

She had never thought she would mourn Marina the way that she did. Marina had maimed and murdered, she had been needlessly cruel. But Marina had come for her when she had needed someone most, broken and slipping in blood. Marina had agreed to help Julia kill Reynard when Marina knew he was going after hedgewitches across the country. She had been bait, and Julia had failed to protect her.

So many failures.

Kady could barely look at her and shame made Julia’s stomach churn. They had been in that room together, Reynard’s mouth dripping blood, and Julia had yelled for Kady to go and she had gone.

They were both ashamed and it hung in the air between them like noxious fog.

But Kady thanked Julia for saving her life and for an instant Julia could feel proud of her quick actions to save Kady.

They made a plan to steal from Brakebills and suddenly they were “best bitches”.

Someone was in Julia’s corner again, and it wasn’t a brutal hedge or a literal monster.

Julia entered the Physical Cottage alone for the first time, an intruder in a foreign land. She didn’t like being there alone. With Q it had just been elements of jealousy and bitterness mixed in with a whole lot of wonderment. Now the house was empty of Q and his friends and they might never return.

And then.

“Julia? What the fuck are you doing here?”

Margo storms down the stairs with fire in her eyes.

“Look, I can explain.”

“No,” Margo snarls, not willing to let her go on.

Margo tells her that Alice is dead. That Quentin almost died, was almost torn in two. Julia can barely breathe.

She tries to defend herself, tries to explain that she had a plan and if they had just waited, just trusted-

“Quentin should have left you in your little hedge hole, trading rim jobs for spells.”

Julia hates herself, she hates the things she’s done, the choices she’s made, but Margo is _not_ going to be the one to talk down to her about them. Julia has crawled through the shit of the magic world underbelly and yes, she had been in a hedge hole and pulled herself out, and she had seen things because of being cast out in the cold that Margo would never dream of.

“You actually think because you go to this bullshit school that you’re better than me.”

“I think I didn’t get my friends killed.”

“You don’t have friends. You have people that are so scared of you they’d rather be on your side. There’s a difference.”

Julia thinks of the lifetimes that Margo was a friend of hers. She’s glad she has no memories of them.

Margo is clearly shaken, but she bites back in her Margo way, “Well, and you have no one. And you deserve no one.”

She’s not wrong.

Julia can’t let it hurt her. She tells Margo about all the women that Reynard has murdered. Even after all they’ve said to one another, Margo helps her get a copy of the book she needs, because under all those barbs there is a girl that Julia was friends with in thirty nine other timelines.

Julia goes back to Kady. They finish up the steps to the spell, the words Margo said swelling slowly to consume her heart. She blurts out, “Look, what Margo said about me was true.” _You have no one and you deserve no one_. “So if- if you want to bail, now’s your chance.”

Kady scoffs and basically bats the idea of bailing away. The words start to shrink, a little.

Maybe she does have someone.

She just wishes she _also_ had the someone that she’d always had before.

.

Alice is dead, and Quentin goes back to Earth.

There is nothing he can do. He goes on the quest, he hunts the White Lady, and no one can bring Alice back to life.

He gets a boring job in a weird as fuck company. He tries to shed every aspect of his old life. No magic, none of his friends.

He doesn’t seek out Julia, who is in the same city as him for the first time in almost a year.

Quentin doesn’t blame Julia for Alice’s death. He might be the only one who doesn’t. It’s not just because he loves Julia, even if he’s mad and hurt and scared by the things she’s done. It’s because Alice had made that choice, to Niffin out to save her friends. Blaming Julia for Alice becoming a Niffin seemed like it would cheapen her sacrifice, somehow. They had made their decisions independently of one another, and they had been dumb fucking decisions from two women he loved with his whole heart.

He can’t quit. Magic plays on his fingertips, calls his name. He uses it for the most mundane tasks just to _use_ it.

Emily Greenstreet calls him on it, and then they have a cheat day.

A cheat day turns into the end of his sabbatical.

Quentin sees Niffin Alice and he runs to her.

.

Julia is pregnant.

She debates the pros and cons of killing herself.

It just keeps happening. Like being raped again, all the power stripped away, her own body invaded.

Kady refuses to let her be alone in this.

She takes her to the appointment. She is calm and steady.

Julia admits that she is nervous, when an abortion has to be the easiest part of her Killing A God voyage yet.

Kady tells Julia that she had an abortion. That it had felt lonely.

“But you’re not alone. I’m your best bitch, remember?”

“Yeah.”

The abortion goes wrong. The doctor dies.

Kady gets her out of there.

.

Quentin goes to find Alice.

Julia goes to find answers.

Eventually, it turns out what they both need to get is some gold.

.

Quentin sees Julia for the first time since The Beast as she dashes up the Physical Cottage stairs, barely able to look at him.

Niffin Alice doesn’t make it easy to have an honest and sane conversation with Julia, but Quentin doesn’t let it stop him. This is the first conversation they’ve had in so long, the first time they’ve been able to just talk it out. He can feel the guilt and sadness radiating off her, he feels her turmoil, and he wants to reach out and fix what’s broken, help her be whole again.

“My best friend in the world does crazy shit, and doesn’t trust me, and doesn’t listen to me.”

“It’s not that simple and you know it.”

It’s not that simple, of course it isn’t, but he wishes that she had trusted him enough to clue him into her plan to trick The Beast, to let him help her with her plan. He knows why she hadn’t, but it still hurts. Maybe things wouldn’t have gotten so screwed up.

“I promised you, in Fillory, when you told me about Reynard, that I would help you somehow, and that is not a promise that I intend on breaking.”

Julia gives him a small nod.

“So if there is anything that I can do…”

“Actually there is. Help us rob a bank.”

It is not at all what he expected. Niffin Alice is thrilled.

.

Everyone who hates Julia and everyone who loves Julia gather together and agree to rob a bank.

It’s awkward and nerve-wracking when even Margo agrees and Julia feels a swell of what _could_ be love for these people who _could_ have been her friends.

And then she’s _benched_.

It makes sense, she has to admit it. The blood goblins are after her and will kill her and ruin their plans. But they’re going to be helping her, and half of them would rather see her dead, and that feels unfair to everyone involved.

Kady reminds her about their necklaces and the fact that she can watch the entire heist go down. That at least gives her some relief.

She sees when disaster hits and doesn’t hesitate. Screw her life: she won’t let _anyone_ die. Quentin and Kady are in there.

Julia saves them and nearly dies in the process.

When she wakes up, there is a hole in her.


	10. Chapter 10

Quentin doesn’t know what it means to be Shadeless, but the idea of Julia not being all _there_ anymore scares him more than many, many of the horrors he has faced thusfar.

He has a lot to deal with himself. Niffin Alice is a wearing him down, and he makes a Words As Bond with her to pay her back for the bank heist. He wants to know how to help Alice, turn her back into a human. It’s hard to know what to address first.

So the first time he sees Julia after she wakes, he is thrown off by how un-Julia she is. Reckless, flippant, blank in a way that Julia never was. She looks at him like he means… nothing much to her. Even at their worst, she had never looked at him like that.

Julia makes a portal and walks out of the protection of the wards as cool as a cucumber. Quentin follows.

.

Julia hasn’t felt this good in a very long time.

Or maybe it’s more accurate to say she’s never felt so _little_. It helps, clarifies things.

She has to kill Reynard. So she’ll go do that. No trauma, no hang-ups. Just Julia and a plan. She’s always been good at follow through, but the burden of emotions has always weighed her down. No more of that. Wonderful!

Julia runs into Reynard mere moments after exiting the wards.

Huh, she hadn’t really been expecting that.

Old her would have felt fear, anger, all that sort of stuff. Julia just feels mild amusement that she’d been wrong.

He approaches her and she backs up. She’s fearless, not stupid. He could kill her in an instant. But when he grabs her by the throat she just stares, mildly annoyed at the discomfort of a hand around her neck. It would be inconvenient for him to kill her, but she doesn’t have any tricks up her sleeves at the moment that could disarm a god, so she has to just see how this plays out.

Reynard sniffs the air and says, “I know you’re there.”

Julia turns, to see who he’s talking about.

“Boy. Quentinnn.”

Quentin had followed her after all. Curious. She smiles a little. A part of her isn’t shocked at all, but it’s muted, observant more than grateful.

She loves Quentin, she knows. It’s there, more fact than feeling. And he loves her.

Reynard tells him to run. Will he? Kady had.

He reaches and grabs her. Muscle memory causes her fingers to twitch as if trying to grab him back.

He takes her to Fillory. He leaves her there.

How annoying, that he loves her so much he’d abandon her so she won’t go after Reynard alone. Bothersome.

Then again, she can briefly play Fillory princess. Her younger self would have loved that.

Too bad for the One-Way-Forest. They should have just negotiated with Margo.

.

Quentin is barely keeping his head above water. Alice is a burden he can barely hold, no matter how badly he wants to. He’s feeling more and more unbalanced, weak, and there’s no way for him to fix it other than getting her out of him, whether he finds a way to restore her or not. If he keeps holding onto her he will die. He knows this.

.

“Do you know anything about Shades?” Quentin asks Niffin Alice one day after his research yields nothing.

Niffin Alice gives him a very long look, not replying. Quentin starts to wonder if he’s somehow offended her until she finally says, “You’re asking for Julia.”

“Of course. I want to help her.”

“Sorry,” she says with a shrug and a flip of her hair. “Don’t know anything about them.” A smirk tugs at the corner of her lip. She’s hiding something, but he doesn’t know what, and he’s so tired it doesn’t feel worth it to ask.

.

Julia burns down the entire fucking One-Way-Forest and it barely registers because he’s getting nosebleeds and fainting and can barely stand.

Penny finds Alice in his head and he gets locked in a cage in Brakebills.

And now he can fucking help no one.

.

Julia finds Quentin in a cage, only it’s not Quentin. She can tell in an instant, she knows him better than anyone. Alice. Funny, that, she must have missed something while she was in Fillory.

Talking to Alice is nice. Finally someone who makes some sense. Speaking plainly and honestly.

And yet… she doesn’t like that Alice is in Quentin. Quentin starts to bleed and it makes her… concerned. As close to concerned as she can get. Julia takes Q to the infirmary.

.

Julia shoves Quentin to Reynard because she wants him to let Niffin Alice go to fight him.

He doesn’t.

But why not? It’s the logical thing to do.

No one is doing what needs to be done. Kady won’t let her kill John. Margo didn’t want her to kill the trees. Q won’t let Alice go.

“Julia,” Quentin says, his voice breaking.

It strikes a cord in her and she furrows her brow in confusion. There shouldn’t be cords to pluck _in_ her. And yes, it’s muted, but it makes her take a step forward to get to him. Maybe shoving him was a mistake?

.

He gets out okay. Everything is fine.

But Kady is angry with her. And Quentin almost died. She doesn’t want Kady to be mad at her. She doesn’t want Quentin to die.

It’s hard for her to figure out what she did wrong. She starts sorting through her past memories, trying to piece together emotions. She should feel guilt for what she’s done. She doesn’t. Guilt is a useless emotion, but Kady is mad at her and Quentin almost died. Julia repeats this to herself over and over, and it frustrates her that it doesn’t illicit the response in her that it should.

Quentin almost died. Julia does not want Quentin to die.

The Dean lets her go and Julia goes home and locks herself there. She starts to write down what things should mean. Death is bad, it’s bad for people to die or for her to kill people. It should feel wrong to kill things. She should feel bad for the trees.

She doesn’t like Kady and Quentin looking at her the way they had after she’d pushed him.

Quentin comes for her and she says no, stay away. Continue the recitation. Quentin almost died (because of her). Julia does not want Quentin to die (ever).

It takes a lot of effort to remind herself of things she once knew instinctually. Almost too much effort, but Quentin can’t look at her with fear and sadness and Kady can’t look at her with anger and disappointment. That isn’t right, either.

Quentin says they can get her Shade back.

Julia doesn’t want many things anymore, not in a concrete sense. Her wants are more immediate, moment to moment desires. But long term is more complicated. Reynard dead, because it’s her goal. Quentin not to die. Kady not to look at her that way. Getting her Shade back would get her two of those three things, so logically it would be better to get it back.

And maybe she wants to be whole again. To not feel conflicted when it should be impossible for a person without a Shade to feel conflicted about anything. She hadn’t, not before shoving Quentin. Everything was clear, every decision she made the best one to help her fulfill her goals.

Julia had shoved Quentin, and even without a Shade it had scrambled something inside of her.

Quentin was too much a part of Julia even Shadeless and she’d almost lost him at her own hand.


	11. Chapter 11

Quentin is depressed about Alice, but when he sees Julia’s Shade because of Josh’s magic weed he leaves Fillory immediately to go find it.

Julia without a Shade is still so strange to him, frightening, but he loves her despite this. He loves her, even if she shoved him to Reynard, because he knows she isn’t in her right mind. She isn’t fully Julia, and he needs to help her get that last piece of herself back.

When he gets to her door, she closes him out. He’s kind of surprised at how concerned she looks, how uncertain.

“Q, leave.”

“I’m not going anywhere just open the door.”

“Fuck I could have… I could have killed you.”

Quentin hears part of his Julia in her voice and it gives him pause. She cares about him, she feels guilt about what she’d done. She’s torn between functioning like someone without a Shade, no remorse and no regret, and the Julia that she remembers.

“If I did this, would Q look at me like I’m evil?”

She is using him as her compass and a part of Quentin can’t help but feel pride in that. She still loves him despite everything, might be the only person she still loves. He may not deserve that title anymore after everything, but he has it and he is secretly glad.

“I can’t… really feel any of it, anymore. I’m doing it from memory…. I’m broken. And that makes me dangerous. So you should go.”

Quentin won’t leave her again. She has been broken before, in other ways, and she’s been dangerous before. But Quentin will always love her, and now he has a way of helping her. He will not, not ever, give up this chance to help her, no matter how dangerous it might be for him.

It’s almost fun, going on another quest with Julia. The last one had ended horribly. But this one had more research. They were going to find a dragon! They were going to the fucking Underworld!

Together again, in their own fucked up way.

Quentin tries not to think to hard about the Tesla Flexion. That part of the adventure is particularly painful. He just hopes he gave that Alice some peace.

Julia tries to stop him giving up the button. They can find another way. But the longer a Shade is lost, the less chance it can be rejoined. Fillory is his home, but Julia is his person, and he will sacrifice it for her. The dragon tells them there’s another way back and that makes the decision that much easier.

The Free Traders look at Julia with such adoration, and Quentin can relate. He’s adored her since he was 8 years old. He can tell she loves them too, in a Shadeless way, and he can tell it bothers her that it doesn’t quite connect. It hadn’t, before, and Quentin doesn’t know what exactly has changed for Julia, but he can tell she’s trying so hard to mimic the girl she once was, the girl she could be again once her Shade is back.

He doesn’t know how a person could ever be so strong. Maybe it’s the stubbornness.

They go to Elysium and find Persephone’s mansion.

They find a little Shade boy to ask about Julia’s shade.

Their first description of her, describing her as looking somewhat like Julia and being a mess, does next to nothing to help. He needs more and Julia flounders on a way to describe herself, so Quentin steps in.

“Um, she’s brave, and funny, and she probably made friends with some of the most shy, maladjusted Shades. She’s curious and she won’t take no for an answer.” He can see Julia smiling at him from the corner of his eye.

That’s enough of a description for the Shade boy to place her and identify her as the Shade always breaking into places she shouldn’t be.

How very Julia.

It turns out Persephone is Our Lady Underground, the goddess Julia and her friends had tried to summon. If Julia can still hate, Quentin can tell she hates her.

Julia goes looking for her Shade, but Quentin finds her first, and honestly who could be surprised by that. He grew up with Julia, he knows every inch of her and he finds her breaking into OLU’s room almost instantly.

“Quentin!” Shade Julia barrels into him. She’s a mirror image of Julia at twelve and Quentin almost bursts into tears at the sight of her. She’s beautiful and clever and a part of his Julia he recognizes in his heart.

It turns out Julia found someone else.

Shade Alice runs to him almost identical to how Shade Julia had minutes earlier.

His heart sings recognition here, too.

Who on earth had called a Shade a sliver of the soul, the smallest part? The way Quentin feels seeing the shades of two of the most important people in his life tells him that can’t be right.

But they have to leave Alice’s Shade. Julia doesn’t have room in her to take a ride-along.

He has to say goodbye again. He promises he will find her when he dies.

Julia is staring at him, holding the hand of her Shade.

She insists he go first. He gets one last look at Alice and leaves.

.

Julia exchanges a look with her Shade.

“You’re not taking me, are you?” her Shade says sadly, but she’s wearing a brave look on her face, the kind of look Julia would wear when her mom would make her feel like shit when she was a kid.

“No, I’m not,” Julia says in an attempt at gentle.

Julia nods. “If we were together, we’d do that, too.”

“We would?”

“Mhmm.”

Julia smiles a little. Maybe she can do this. Be Shadeless and be close enough to herself that she doesn’t hurt people. That would be nice, she thinks.

Julia holds out her hand to Shade Alice and she takes it in surprise. “Are you sure? You can’t come back.”

“It’s okay. He needs you.”

“But he needs you too,” Alice insists.

“He _has_ me.”

Julia gives her Shade’s hand a squeeze. She lets go.

.

Quentin wants to turn Julia right back around when he sees Alice’s Shade coming out of Persephone’s bedroom with her. He wants to keep Alice’s Shade, of course he does, but this is Julia’s only chance. He wants her whole again.

Julia just gives him that new, subdued smile and insists it’s what she wants. Even with the foreignness of Julia without her Shade, he recognizes the determination on her face. She wouldn’t change her mind.

“It’s all going to be okay, Quentin,” Shade Alice says.

As the elevator starts to move, Shade Alice disappears into Julia. She shudders and loses her balance a little and Quentin reaches out to steady her. Julia’s face shows more emotion than it has since she lost her Shade, confusion and alarm and fear.

It’s still not complete. When she steadies herself the blankless returns and she shakes her head as if to clear it.

“Jules, I don’t know what to say…”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Julia replies.

“What does it feel like? Her Shade inside you?”

“It’s…” Julia starts, and for a moment her face contorts in pain.

“Julia,” Quentin reaches out and Julia pushes his arm away. She seems alarmed that she had done this and shakes her head again.

“Sorry. No it’s… not mine. She’s not my Shade. So it doesn’t feel… complete. I’m getting more doubt that I’m used to, and my feelings for you are wildly in flux. It’s like Shade Alice is trying to fit me but giving me a lot of real Alice by accident.”

Tears spring into Julia’s eyes. “I killed those trees…”

“It’s okay, you weren’t yourself.”

“I was so sure of my actions. Now everything I’ve done… I’ve made so many mistakes.” Julia puts her head in her hands. “No, stop Alice.”

“How can I help? I want to help,” Quentin asks urgently.

“She’s not mine and I can’t keep her for long,” Julia says. Tears are streaming down her face and it clashes with the uncaring look that has returned. “It could really harm me if I keep her. I’m able to sort of shunt her to the side for brief periods, since she doesn’t fit well in me, but she’ll put down roots if we’re not careful. Not her fault. She wants to help, wants to fill the hole in me. She’s a Shade and her instinct is to help.”

“I’ve done research about how to bring a Niffin back but I’m not sure…”

“Let me look over it when we get back.” Julia wipes her arm across her face, removing some of her tears. “I can help you finish the spell. If you’ve done the legwork it should be fairly simple to include her Shade in the equation and make it all work.”

Quentin stares at Julia for a long moment. He doesn’t want to mess up, he doesn’t want to lose them both, and what if… “Maybe she could fit, eventually. Maybe you could keep her and it would be okay. I don’t want this to go wrong, and if you have a Shade again-“

Julia interrupts him. “No. People aren’t meant to house other people’s Shades. Even if she tries to stay, even if I make her stay, we’ll eventually wind up poisoning one another.” Julia smiles at Quentin and his heart nearly breaks at how close it is to the smile he’s always known, the Julia he can’t live without. She smooths a piece of his hair behind his ear. “This won’t fix me, or anything else. Don’t worry. You’re smarter than you give yourself credit for, Q. I’m sure you’re most of the way there already.”

Quentin is about the reply when everything goes blank for a moment and he wakes up in his own body in a sewer, a dragon staring down at him impassively.

“You smell different,” the dragon purrs at Julia as Julia sits up beside him.

“Got what we needed.”

“But not what we came for,” Quentin finishes.

Julia cocks her head at him, a small smile tugging at her lips.

Quentin reaches for Julia and grabs her into a hug. “I miss you so much, Jules.”

Her hug comes slower, but it’s strong. “I know. Me too.”

“Please get out of my home now,” the dragon growls.


	12. Chapter 12

Alice returns and she hates Quentin.

Quentin is heartbroken.

Julia does not know how to help.

.

Julia asks Kady to be the missing chip, the part of her that knows when to stop or back down. Quentin was another chip, but he's busy being mopey in Brakebills South. She trusts Kady almost as much as she trusts Quentin so Kady is a good person to have in her corner.

Julia knows she needs that. Even with the effort she is putting in, knowing what is right and wrong, she is still impulsive and reckless.

John Gains asks Julia if he thinks Reynard broke her.

She likes to think he didn’t, but she _is_ in pieces across worlds. Julia would rather focus on mending, or being as close as possible to the person she once was, rather than think about how she might never be whole again.

John asks for pizza and Julia goes.

When she gets back, Kady has killed him.

Julia sees the devastation on Kady’s face and wants to help. She wants to be able to say words that will alleviate her guilt, make her smile. She doesn’t know _how_. She does what she knows how to do: she moves. Tells Kady to clean up, gets rid of the body, puts the magic into a battery and then a bullet. Julia is glad for the first time in a week that she can’t feel much of anything. It makes the whole process very efficient.

.

Julia goes with Kady to kill Reynard.

She is about to pull the trigger when OLU freezes Reynard and Kady in place and appeals to her compassion.

It’s stupid, really. She doesn’t have a Shade. Compassion is nearly impossible, only an _idea_. But she pauses and tries to think what she might have done before, when she was whole.

She doesn’t know, doesn’t have a memory that is a good comparison.

Julia is mad at Our Lady Underground. She would hate her, if she could.

Would Quentin spare Reynard?

OLU gives her a choice. It feels like the first choice she’s had in months.

She puts down the gun.

Kady hates her. Kady looks at her in that way…

“It was the right thing.”

“How the _hell_ would you know that?”

“… I’m sorry, Kady.”

Kady leaves her. Julia does not like how many times she has seen Kady’s back as she’s walked away from her. It seems like too high a number.

Julia's Shade comes for her. Our Lady, a thank you, an apology.

Her Shade runs to her and hugs her and the hole in her is filled.

She nearly screams as everything rushes back and she falls to her knees, sobs wracking her body.

.

Julia doesn’t tell anyone that her Shade is back. She goes back to her apartment and curls up on her couch and tries not to kill herself.

Eliot sees her first, out of everyone. They’ve never had a single conversation. Somehow, he reaches her. His words connect to her. Eliot should hate her, for betraying them, but he doesn’t. He’s over it.

“Wanna put some pants on and help me save all of magic?”

A goal. Julia can work with one of those.

Julia goes to Brakebills South with him and sees Kady. She can’t even apologize before Kady walks away.

She can push things aside for a mission, because if she lets all of the things that are haunting her return to the forefront she’ll be back curled up somewhere wanting to die and hating herself.

.

Quentin can’t help Alice. She rejects him at every turn. He wants to stay at Brakebills South with her, be there in case she changes her mind, but Eliot reminds him that he is a King. He has a duty to Fillory and to his friends.

They come up with a plan. Umber won’t listen, but Quentin can distract him long enough for Julia to grab the snow globe with Umber’s new world in it and travel to Fillory.

Quentin has decided he hates gods. From his interactions with Ember and Umber, for what Reynard and Our Lady Underground did to Julia, for all the unanswered prayers, he _hates_ them.

Ember and Umber are beyond reason, they don’t give a shit about anything but themselves, so what are they supposed to do? What plan will make them listen, understand that they are people and they have thoughts and feelings and lives, that just because they are small they aren’t toys to be played with. There is nothing that will get this through to them. He knows this, and he knows that Julia does, too.

When Umber teleports them out of Not-Cuba, Julia runs to his side and helps him up. He hasn’t seen her since she got her Shade back (and he had to find out from Eliot, what an asshole he is). But they’re still Quentin and Julia. They’re still in sync.

When Umber is dying they exchange a look. Julia grabs the god's essence of Umber out of the air and infuses the sword.

They’re going to _kill_ this motherfucker.

Julia distracts him, setting him up. Insults him, makes him angry, and Ember chokes her.

Quentin grabs the sword and kills him.

Julia collapses to her knees and when they’re sure Ember is dead, Q rushes to her side.

“I- I guess I need a new goal,” Julia mumbles to herself. Quentin isn’t sure what she means, but he thinks he gets it.

.

The old gods turn off magic because of what Quentin and Julia did.

Well, they were always getting into trouble as kids, makes sense it would carry over into adulthood.

.

Magic is gone. Quentin walks around like a ghost at Brakebills. Julia goes to Yale. Quentin asks her if she’ll apply to Brakebills now that it’s visible to everyone and they know she belongs there.

Julia laughs a short, dismissive laugh. “I wouldn’t go to Brakebills if you _paid_ me. Sorry, Q, but that school is bullshit. This time you won’t be out of touch though, promise? You’ll actually call, email?”

There’s a note of worry there.

“Of course, Jules. I’m sorry about-“

“I know you are. You don’t have to apologize every time.”

They hug and they part. This time, it is on their terms. This time, they call each other once a week, email every night.

But when Julia makes her first sparks, she travels in person to tell him. It’s not something to say over the phone, not something to email. He wouldn’t believe her unless he saw it himself.

It takes a stupid amount of time to travel to Quentin, but she gets there and she finds him sitting on a bench, smoking, glum and guilt-ridden.

“Boo.”

He’s surprised to see her, forgotten there aren’t wards.

Quentin is busy blaming himself about all of magic being gone, Julia has to remind him that it was a two person job.

“I’ll be burning in hell right next to you. But at least we’ll have each other.”

Julia wants to show him the sparks, but she makes him promise not to tell. He is the person she trusts with this, because he is her Quentin.

He doesn’t believe her, but when her sparks light up her fingertips and both of their faces he is in awe.

“Oh my god. How?”

“I have no idea.”

They sit there, sparks on Julia’s fingers, and they agree wordlessly that this time, this quest, they will do it together.


	13. Chapter 13

Working together is natural, and even if they aren’t making a whole lot of progress they get through more dead ends and false trails together than they would have apart.

Their working theories involve OLU and Reynard, remnants from one of them. Julia hopes its from Our Lady Underground and her Shade, but Q seems to lean more towards it being left over “essence” of Reynard. Julia hates that it could be an option.

Josh takes them to meet a god, and Julia is less than thrilled.

Every interaction she’s had with gods has been a shitshow.

Bacchus doesn’t even let them in. He says, “Come back when you’re fun.”

Julia and Quentin exchange a look. They are fun! Aren’t they? Sure, they’ve been a little bit depressed lately, serious, but they’ve had shit to deal with! They’re fun. _Totally_.

They get drunk and Julia is struck with inspiration. They do their dance from the sophomore talent show and Julia feels that rush of love and contentment that she’d felt then, dancing with her best friend Q while drunk in a stairwell.

They’re welcomed into the party.

Quentin tries to talk to Bacchus but is largely unsuccessful. Julia doesn’t do much of the talking because she didn’t want to deal with a god in the first place, but she helps where she can, shoring up some of Quentin’s awkward babbling.

Julia finds herself a bed to lay down on and suddenly Reynard is there. She sits up, terrified, but it’s not even him. Just some random guy. Her PTSD messing with her. She sees Josh and sits down with him, because she doesn’t know him but he’s safe.

She opens up a little to Josh. He’s sweet and harmless and clearly very sad. Lost, without magic. She knows what it means to be lost without magic. She wants to help him and she only has a spark but she shows him, because he needs hope. If she can’t give it to him, what is the point of her magic?

Quentin pulls her out of there and warns about showing her magic to the wrong people.

“He is not the wrong people. I can’t go through the rest of my life just not trusting anyone, I feel fucked up enough.”

Quentin doesn’t get it, not fully, so Julia tries to explain. “Look, just put yourself in my shoes just for once second, Q. I have magic, and what does it do? More or less jack shit. And I see someone whose entire life would change if he could just see it. I have to be able to do something with it, and if it’s cheer up Josh Hoberman then I’ll take it, because I can’t be so precious with something that is so small.”

“It’s not small, it’s the biggest magic, Jules. Cuz as far as we know for us little guys it is the only magic out there.”

Julia knows where Q is coming from, understands his worry. But he doesn’t understand. A lifetime ago Julia had pulled herself from the grime and stink of hedgehell and had joined Free Traders Beowulf, and she had _promised_ herself that she would use magic to help people. It was her penance for the shit she’d done, and it felt _right_. She had strayed so far from that path. She’d burned down sentient trees, she’d nearly gotten her friends killed. Julia would be damned if she didn’t try again, try to use what little she had to do the one thing she’d set out to do.

Even if it was just Josh, even if it was just a party trick in this hopeless world. She’d give it to him.

She owed the world that much.

The party gave them a clue, but it wasn’t until they got the rabbit from Eliot that they could figure out what to even do with it. They find the book in the library and Julia is less the impressed, but Q gets it almost immediately.

“Jules, this is our quest. And we’re already on it.”

.

Quentin is on a quest. His first real, true quest. He’s thrilled, though he is a little sad at how tedious the first part of the quest is. Reading, rereading, stuck on Earth when the first key is in Fillory and they can’t do anything to help. It’s all on Eliot’s shoulders, and while Quentin has the utmost faith in El and knows they will be moving on to the next step soon, he feels useless.

But he’s on a roll, and he’s the one who remembers about Mayakofsky’s batteries. They can use the batteries to power the clock, which is a permanent door to Fillory.

Josh finds a video with an asshole bear and Q and Josh know it’s him. Julia is skeptical but she never had to suffer Brakebills South.

They know someone who is familiar with hedge bars. Quentin hates to ask, hates the tight, pained look on Julia’s face when he brings it up. But they have to.

Enter, Kady.

.

Julia hasn’t seen Kady that brief moment at Brakebills South.

She dreads it.

But they’re on a quest, they have to do this. They have to bring Kady in.

Julia knew this was coming. She had always known Kady would reenter her life somehow, and the bunnies from Eliot had given them the whole list of Questers. It had taken a little bit of puzzling for some of them, but she knew that Kady was the Warrior just as surely as she knew she was The God-Touched. There had never been a stronger warrior in the world than Kady Orloff-Diaz.

Julia tries to keep it business, tries to let Kady keep that space from her she wants. It’s okay, Julia understands. But showing Kady her spark of magic, that feels personal, and Julia is anxious as she manifests her small little flame. She turns it off quickly after seeing the look of confusion on Kady’s face and she isn’t surprised to hear the anger in Kady’s voice. The accusation.

How? How does Julia have magic when she deserves it the least of all of them? When she had betrayed Kady.

Julia appeals to Kady in the only way she knows how. “Maybe we can help Penny.”

She sees the anger flare, knows Kady is fuming at her for even mentioning Penny’s name. It stings, but Kady already hates her. And Julia isn’t just bluffing. She’d help Penny in an instant if she could.

Kady lashes out at her and she tries to apologize, but Q is already moving on. The apology wouldn’t have been accepted anyway.

Kady gets them to the bar.

.

Quentin has to meet up with Emily Greenstreet and somehow he feels like this is going to be the most awkward part of the entire quest.

.

Quentin and Julia go to an orgy in the park and Julia is almost pulled in.

For an instant, her libido is back. Her body feels hot and free from fear. Q grabs her and gets her out of there, but it was _nice_. She’s glad he stopped her but Julia hopes that means her sex drive is still there somewhere, buried and just waiting to be unearthed.

Quentin is so awkward about the whole thing and Julia loves him so much. Endearing dork.

Then he knows the highest building in the area and her heart hurts.

Q saves a woman Julia doesn’t know in an act of extreme bravery and selflessness, but the battery is lost.

Also, Alice’s cat explodes. So that’s a thing.

.

Quentin disappears to go see his dad, which is kind of weird and not like him but Julia understands when he says his dad got worse. Quentin loves his dad despite the strain in their relationship. Julia doesn’t understand how his dad got worse when his cancer was magical in nature, but if Q’s going in the middle of a quest it must be bad.

Julia finds Kady in the Physical Cottage.

She wants to help. She’ll do whatever she can for Penny. For Kady.

Summonings have not gone well for Julia in the past, though, and her gut fills with fear. She pushes past it.

A homeless lady on the street grabs her arm and tells her she’s missing the signs. What signs? Does it have to do with why she has magic and no one else does? The woman seemed to revert back to her normal self, leaving Julia with more questions than answers.

Working magic with Kady is as easy as ever. The summoning works. There is no blood, no slaughter. Julia breathes a sigh of relief.

Maybe too soon.

Penny dies.


	14. Chapter 14

Quentin is possessed by the Lamprey and then spends nearly three hours puking out it’s eggs from inside his stomach.

He remembers the experience like he’s watching on a movie screen. He’d been aware the whole time, struggling to take back control, but the Lamprey must have released some sort of calming chemicals in his brain or else he might have died from the fear and panic. As it was he had struggled but it had been subdued and ultimately fruitless.

He’d gone back to the Physical Cottage just in time to find out from Julia that Penny had died.

He laughs when he hears. He doesn’t mean to. It’s a panicked, horrified laugh. Penny was one of them, despite his attempts to not be, despite their sometimes forgetting about and excluding him because of it. Penny had never liked Quentin, and now he never would.

It is a sobering thought.

He wants to be able to say something for him, about him. But there’s not much he can. His memories with Penny are largely negative. The best time he’d had with him had been in the Flying Forest, and they’d been high off their asses. He doesn’t even know how to pronounce Penny’s last name.

Kady says that none of them really knew Penny, and she’s right. She’s also right that he’d kept it that way. None of them knew anything about his family or his life before Brakebills. Quentin’s big claim to fame had been knowing that Penny’s prized possession was a chocolate wrapper. Other than that…

It’s shameful, that they didn’t know more about Penny Adiyodi. It will haunt him for the rest of his life.

.

Julia saves Kady’s life when Kady tries to kill herself.

The magic isn’t anything she knows, it’s just instinct that makes her put her hands on Kady’s chest and _will_ her to be okay.

It doesn’t feel like enough, because Kady is still broken and there’s nothing Julia can do to fix it.

.

They’re still on a quest. Eliot succeeded in getting the first key, though they haven’t heard from him and that worries Quentin. Still, they get their clues to the second and Quentin and Julia forge on together to find it. It’s nice, having Julia by his side for this, and he appreciates that they’ve been doing this quest together so far since the very beginning. He’d always wanted to go on a quest with his best friend, and here they are.

They follow the clues and wind up going to visit an old Brakebills student, Irene McAllister. Quentin distracts her while Julia goes for the key. When they leave, Julia has a distinctly uncomfortable look on her face.

“What is it?”

“The key…” Julia trails off. She shakes her head. “No, I don’t know. Something about it.”

“Like it’s dangerous?”

“We already knew that.”

When they get back to the Physical Cottage they examine it more closely, Quentin getting on his knees to kneel and look at it.

“It’s uncomfortable to hold… makes me feel, I don’t know, like I’m not really myself.”

“Then I will pass on touching it,” Quentin says, closing the lid on the key. His mind is already a mess, he’s not going to go messing with a key that could make Julia feel unsteady, especially when she’s the strongest person he knows.

Dean Fogg shows up and makes everyone feel uncomfortable.

Julia makes a joke about both of them being kicked out of Brakebills. It’s sort of a moot point, there is no Brakebills to be kicked out of really at this point, but the joke makes him feel a bit better about failing the school.

Eliot bursts through the door with Fen and a strange girl in tow. The lingering apprehension at not hearing from El disappears and Q rushes to hug him.

Eliot picks up the key and it turns out Penny is fucking alive.

.

Quentin and Eliot walk through a doorway to Fillory and in one reality, they never return.

In that reality, they live their lives. Quentin misses Alice and Margo, he misses his dad. And he misses Julia. He misses her terribly.

He dreams about her. Her smile, her laugh, her hugs and warmth.

The dreams fade with time. He forgets the sound of her voice, the color of her hair. He forgets so many things.

He never forgets _her_ , the essence of her. How she had fit so snuggly to his side.

He is not unhappy. His life with Eliot is a _good_ one. He has a son, Theodore Rupert, who they call Rupert. He tells his son all about his life before, about his friends and his quest. He was a King of Fillory, and his best friend was God-Touched.

Eliot tells Rupert as many tales about Margo, and Rupert grows knowing and loving the aunts he will never meet. It’s bittersweet. But with time, that pain fades. Eliot and Quentin raise their son with love, love that ripples through time and from people worlds away.

This is a life, a well lived life, that unlocks the secret of the mosaic.

This reality fades, leaving the taste of peaches and plums.

Quentin and Eliot are glad to be home with their Julia and Margo.

.

It is clear that Alice is not okay.

Julia doesn’t know how to address this, though. It’s not like she knows the girl. She’d met her Shade, she’d brought her back from being a Niffin, but she doesn’t _know_ her. Still, she wants to help. Julia can feel Alice’s pain from a mile away, even without magic.

They go get a drink.

Alice gives her an idea, and she holds the Truth key and looks in the mirror.

She has Reynard’s eyes.

Julia finds out her seed is in fact from Reynard the Fox, and OLU planted it in her. Forced it inside of her.

Julia _hates_ them.

She wants it out of her, she wants _him_ out of her.

She agrees to give Alice the seed to get rid of the last remnants of him.

.

The transfer works.

.

Quentin goes alone on a quest for the fourth key.

It’s fun to be on the Muntjac. He wishes Eliot could come with him, but there is stuff that needs doing in Fillory and Margo had suffered enough alone. Eliot needs to be with her, helping her. Quentin understands that more than anything. He would do the same for Jules.

He rescues Poppy from the sea and she has the fourth key.

She hands it over without any sort of protest, and that should clue him in.

He wakes up and there’s another version of himself made visible, a version that hates him and everything that he is.

So basically his depression run rampant.

He’s dealt with this monster before, this version of him that wants to kill himself, but it’s never been in his face. Never been so very… real. Whispers in his head, bile in his throat, but never standing there, right in front of him, telling him all the things he has done wrong, all the reasons he should hate himself. It starts at the surface. It works its way in.

“The part of you that kept magic from Julia when you could have helped her, that is what set her on that path. You got your best friend sexually assaulted.” No no, please no. He had thought those things so many times, had hated himself to his core for not helping her, for dooming her. He had forced her down that road, right into Reynard’s waiting arms. His fault, his fault.

“How many people have to pay the price for your heroics.”

“Stop.”

“You are willing to destroy everyone around you to find something that makes you feel okay but you are never going to _feel_ okay.”

“No, stop, you’re trying to get in my head,” Quentin whimpers. His Depression Monster kneels in front of him and Quentin would do anything to get away from it as it speaks the truths that he tries to hide from, the deepest hatreds in his soul.

“Quentin, I am your head. You know I’m right because I am you.”

It’s right. He’s right.

There’s no turning away from this now.

His actions had hurt Julia, hurt Alice, hurt everyone he loved. His very existence was a curse on them.

He should just die.

He nearly does. Benedict saves him. Benedict dies in his place.

The Depression Monster is gone, but he can’t help feeling it should have been him.


	15. Chapter 15

Penny comes to Julia to say goodbye.

He tries to leave and Julia wants to help, she always wants to help.

He tells her not to act like she cares and she protests. She does care. She may not know him, but she doesn’t want him to give up.

If not for his own sake, then for Kady’s. Julia would give _anything_ not to see the broken look on Kady’s face again.

“Give up? You’re the one who had magic and you gave it away. What’s your plan? Go back to law school? Live off your trust fund?” He’s mocking her.

“Actually no, my plan was to take five minutes and try to remember what life was like without a god or a quest or some dead asshole bothering me. And I don’t know, frankly beyond that it’s none of your business.”

“Because you have nothing beyond that.”

Julia has no response.

She goes to the park to relax, read a book, think it over. She has the time, now. She’ll help with the quest, but she’s not the one carrying the burden of the seed anymore. She can breathe. Because the last bits of Reynard are gone from her.

Reynard is there, in her dreams.

“I’m not the bone. I’m the terror.”

Julia wakes with a start.

Nothing is fixed.

.

Quentin returns from Fillory to Alice on the floor, nearly dead.

He can’t believe Julia and Alice did something so dangerous. Transferring Julia’s power to Alice? An entire magical transplant? Wait, he can definitely believe that. His two girls. Fucking dumbasses.

He loves them despite their recklessness, but that doesn't stop him from being mad at them.

Julia tells him to go get the key from the Underworld. She’ll take care of Alice.

“No, I’m gonna stay here and help.”

“I don’t think more is merrier here. I don’t know, didn’t you notice your ex is a little-”

“Stubborn,” he says loud enough for Alice to hear. “I noticed.”

“Alice and I got in this together. I’ll get us out, one way or another. And I will make sure that she is okay. Okay? Go get the key while you still can. We’re all kind of counting on you to bring back all the magic.”

Quentin agrees. It isn’t until he’s out of the room that he realizes that Julia had said she’d make sure Alice was okay but nothing about herself. Didn’t she know by now that he wanted both of them to be okay?

He goes to rescue Kady.

.

Julia gets a brief hit of magic from Irene McAllister so she can initiate the power transfer. Alice attacks her and she is knocked clean out.

When she wakes, she feels the seed back inside of her.

“I transferred it all back. I’m sorry. All you did was try to help me and I almost killed you,” Alice says, her voice soft and remorseful.

“Yeah, well, my magic almost killed you so I guess we’re even,” Julia jokes unsteadily. They’re not friends, and she hadn’t expected Alice to return the seed. Their unfamiliarity and awkwardness hangs between them.

Alice talks to her openly, for the first time. Maybe more openly than she has with anyone since coming back from being a Niffin. Julia feels like she shouldn’t be the one to hear this. It should be someone who knows Alice, who loves Alice. Quentin or… or…

Julia realizes that Alice doesn’t have anyone else, not really. Not since being a Niffin. Maybe not ever. Alice is more alone than nearly any of them.

Julia knows how that feels. She’ll be the ear to listen, since Alice clearly needs someone.

“I still see Reynard.” Julia offers up her own vulnerability, her own secret shame, to help Alice feel less alone.

“You do?”

“Awake, in my dreams. Yep.”

“Do you think maybe it’s because-”

“I think it’s because it happened and there’s nothing magic about it anymore. When things happen they leave a mark. Figuring out how to deal with it takes time.”

“I get what Quentin always saw in you,” Alice says, looking pained to admit it. “You’re brave.”

“Just stubborn.”

“I think that’s why you can hold it. All the pain and all of the shit you didn’t ask for, that’s what made you you. And that’s why this magic fits.”

“Maybe sometimes life is random and unfair. It doesn’t always ask our permission, it just is.” Julia felt the heat of the seed thrum in her chest. “Honestly, it still makes me sick to think that it was his.”

Alice looks at her with genuine confusion on her face, not a look that Julia recognizes. She’s rarely seen Alice look anything but stoic and certain. “Except that it’s not his anymore, Julia. I felt it, it’s yours for whatever reason.”

Julia feels the seed pulse again. Hers? How could it be hers, after it had been his? But Alice said she had felt it. And even sitting there, right now, Julia couldn’t feel any Reynard in it. Before she’d given it to Alice, it had been there, a sort of unyielding force. Now she couldn’t feel that. She probed her magic with her mind and it was soft, flowed with her thoughts. Hers…

“So what are you going to do with it?”


End file.
